While many other car-makers (with the notable exception of Toyota) are jumping on the lithium ion bandwagon for new hybrid models, Honda will stick with nickel metal hydride for now. Honda President Takeo Fukui told Automotive News that lithium ion batteries are not yet reliable or durable enough for high volume applications. When Honda debuts a new dedicated hybrid model early next year to take on the Prius, it will continue to use nickel metal hydride batteries.

Honda hopes to top 200,000 annual sales with its new hybrid model, a car that is expected to be priced below the current Civic hybrid. Honda has chosen to use a lithium battery in its FCX Clarity fuel cell car, but those will be very low volume initially and much more expensive. The continued use of nickel probably has as much to do with cost as anything else at this point. Given Honda's price and volume targets, there is probably no lithium battery available right now to the meet the need. According to Fukui, the new model is being engineered to allow for a running change to lithium when the batteries do meet the company's specifications.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. req'd]

This week, Sam brings back two interviews - one with Ford's Scott Staley about what's going on in Hybrid land, which is then balanced by a conversation with John Lapetz that pulls back the curtain on the hydrogen research that's been going on in Dearborn. Also touched on are the Chevy Volt and the EFlex architecture itself, set to go into series production in 2010. Things move from the EFlex to the challenge of bringing Li-Ion batteries to market. Ford also announced that there will be an experimental program with Southern California Edison, which will essentially serve as a real-world test for plug-in capable Escape hybrids. It's 53 and a half minutes this week, dig in!


SUBSCRIBE to the AutoblogGreen Podcast in iTunes
LISTEN to the show now
ADD the AutoblogGreen Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator

Click on the photo for a high-res gallery of the Toyota Hybrid-X concept

For some time now the third generation Toyota Prius was expected to debut in the fall of 2008 carrying a lithium ion battery pack and and very possibly plug-in capability. In the past week it has been reported that neither the lithium energy storage or the plug-in capability would be there and now it looks the timeline has slipped as well.

Of course, since Toyota never officially announced a launch date they are refusing to call the slip to a spring 2009 debut a program slip or even acknowledge the new or old date. By the time the new Prius hits the market there will be several new competitors available including the Ford Fusion/Mercury Milan hybrids and the plug-in version of the two-mode Saturn Vue is due that same year.

It looks like Toyota's decision to stick with their local supplier might have come back to haunt them. Panasonic currently supplies the NiMH hydride batteries that Toyota uses and they have been focusing on LiNiCoAlO2 cathodes which are considered to be the least thermally stable of the currently available lithium chemistries. Other companies like A123 use materials such as doped iron phosphate and other materials that have better thermal stability. At this stage of the program Toyota might actually better off going to a new source for lithium batteries rather than reverting to NiMH.

[Source: Reuters]

ECD Ovonics, a pioneer in nickel metal hydride battery technology has agreed to license some of their patents to G4 Synergetics. G4 will pay royalties to Ovonics in order to build NiMH batteries consumer applications and potentially also Chinese scooter and bicycle applications. They won't be allowed to make batteries for any automotive or other transport uses.

[Source: ECD Ovonics]

Click on the photo for a gallery of high-res images of the Lotus EVE demonstrator

Just before the Geneva Motor Show, Lotus unveiled a new hybrid technology demonstration vehicle called EVE (efficient, viable and environmental), based on a Proton Gen2. The battery pack for EVE was supplied by nickel metal hydride battery specialist Cobasys. The pack used in the EVE car is a NiMHax 144V, 30kW unit that has integrated cooling and battery management system including software.

The Cobasys pack was designed to be plug and play for easy integration into the vehicle and includes a liquid cooling system. The integrated software is designed to optimize the charging of the individual cells to ensure maximum performance, lifespan and safety of the system. Cobasys is the supplier of battery packs for the current General Motors mild hybrid systems in the Saturn Aura and Vue and the upcoming Chevrolet Malibu. The Cobasys press release is after the jump.

[Source: Cobasys]

As part of the recent battery technology briefing at the General Motors Technical Center, the attendees were taken on a tour of the hybrid battery test lab. Our group was taken through by lab manager Doug Drauch, who gave us an overview of the activities that take place in the lab. GM has four phases of battery testing with the first phase focusing on individual cells and their performance. In phase two testing, they evaluate the performance and behavior of strings of cells tied together but not fully assembled into a pack.

In phase three, they test fully assembled battery packs, and phase four is system integration testing. The lab we went through focuses on phase two and three with some limited phase four testing. The lab that does the phase one testing is in another building on the Tech Center campus. Continue on after the jump for more on the lab tour and what goes on there.

Related:

• General Motors invites us behind the curtain: battery development..
• Editorial: Why the carmakers seem to be dragging their feet on ba...

Lithium-ion batteries have been in use for some time in our personal electronics devices, most notably in laptop computers. The switch was made to lithium-ion from NiMh, or nickel metal hydride batteries because they are lighter, cheaper, and smaller than other kinds of batteries. They don't suffer from the 'memory' effect that gave nickel batteries a bad name, they contain relatively few toxic metals and are fairly simple to recycle. Nickel metal hydride and ni-cad or nickel cadmium batteries were the batteries of choice for high power applications before lithium-ion.

Recently, though, lithium-ion has had some controversy. It seems that in the quest for ever-higher capacities, some manufacturers (SONY is the big one) have pushed the technology too far. Some laptops were catching fire or exploding because the batteries got too hot.

Enter lithium polymer? Perhaps... Li-po or lithium polymer batteries have been in use under pretty demanding applications such as battle-bots and radio control airplanes for a little while, and some companies are investigating them for other uses. Treehugger investigated them as did CNet news. Time will tell if these new-tech batteries can challenge other newcomers in the field like A123Systems, Altair Nanotechnologies and Firefly Technologies offerings.

Related:

• Battery companies battle it out for market share
• GM Awards two lithium-ion battery contracts for PHEV Saturn Vue
• NEC in talks to partner with Nissan on lithium ion batteries

[Source: wikipedia.org]